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Tuesday, 22 January 2013

I have been wondering for sometime if any of my earlier poetry was good enough for submitting to a contest. With some editing and modifications which I have been working on. Well it is something whilst I have problems with writing new poems.

I saw however that there are competitions for Haiku. Not saying that they are easier, in fact they do not immediately suit my style. For instance read: Poetry contests for new poets.

I have therefore submitted three haiku to the Haiku Foundation contest for the new year (2013). I havae edited three that have been posted in this blog which does not count as publishing for this contest. They are:-

traditional haiku:

Footsteps in the snowfreshly fallen, crisp and whitefollow them, should I?

modern haiku:

Poetry is wordswords live foreverforget me not

innovative haiku:

Inspiration growsPoetrynew thinking, new skills

I await results with anticipation although I don't really expect to hear anything, I can already see other edits / changes which I could have made. Is any art ever perfect?

Monday, 21 January 2013

I have written about my difficulties creating poetry at the moment. I am not sure why this is but to reiterate, I used to be able to write poetry quite freely but I seem to have dried up. I have sought and discusssed possible reasons but this has had little effect.

I have been reading more modern poetry and not enjoying the so-called "free poetry", as published in many modern magazines and in their web-sites. I think I have come to accept non-rhyming poetry; but poems without structure and rhythm and readwith no sense to the line lengths has left me cold. I think this is because before I am a writer, I am a musician and an artist. I like to be able to pick up a poem and read or more likely "perform" it without having to study the nuances which the poet may or may not have thought about.

I have seen texts which seem to excuse this on the basis that the message is the most important thing and the overall structure of the poem should noy be allowwed to get in the way. Bullsh*t. This is lazyness on the part of the poet. I have seen free poetry which I have enjoyed but the poet has considered his reader and made it obvious by various techniques what his intentions were.

Similarly, I can enjoy abstract art - but by no means all of it.

I am of the opinion that reading so much poetry that I find almost offensive has been bad for me, drying up the stream of what seems to be considered childish crap. I still find ideas relating to things happening around me but I just seem to run out of steam. However, I have been reintroduced to Haiku - short and to the point. This has given me a way forward to explore some of these ideas without worrying about completing long(er) poems.

Monday, 14 January 2013

I am really suffering from a bad case of writers block. Nothing is happening for me at all this month. I have become so desperate that I have been searching for poetry prompts on the internet and thought that I would share a site with you. Creative writing now.

Let me give a couple of examples, I hope that the site owner won't mind:-

9) Write a poem from the perspective of a character in a fairy tale.
10) Write a poem using all of the following words: moth, angle, cloth, tangle.
11) Write a poem that tells the story of a specific love affair or marriage.
12) Write a poem in the form of a message or letter to your future self.
13)
Write a poem about the color red or another color. (Some ideas for
brainstorming: How does the color make you feel? What things do you
associate with that color?)